Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: August 9, 2009 (Blog)

G.I. Joe shoots up the top spot at the box office; Jennifer Aniston goes to prison; Gunsmoke rides again; The Losers begin and Renny Harlin goes to Russia.

Box Office

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra shot up the top spot with an estimated $56 million over the weekend. The film had a lot of bad buzz surrounding its release so this is seen as something of a coup. The $175 million price budget means that the film will need to do well abroad and sell a lot of toys before we see a sequel.

Meryl Streep shows that age isn’t a factor in her popularity as she scored her third $20 million-plus opener in three years with Julie and Julia. The film took $21.5 million over the weekend. If the film has the same legs as The Devil Wears Prada and Mama Mia then it could hit the $100 million mark.

Jerry Bruckheimer’s G-Force was third with a weekend take of $8.5 million giving the family film a strong $84 million total.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince banked more than $8 million giving the mega franchise film a huge $273 million total.

People just don’t seem to be finding Funny People funny. The Judd Apatow/ Adam Sandler film took just under $8 million this weekend. It’ll never see it’s $75 million production budget back on US screens.

The Ugly Truth banked another $7 million giving the R-rated comedy $69 million so far.

The Perfect Getaway failed to find an audience this weekend and made $6 million. It was cheap to make and should find an audience on DVD.

(500) Days Of Summer earned $4.3 million on just over 800 screens.

Orphan and Aliens in the Attic both took just under $4 million.

Movie News

1. Jennifer Aniston will star in Goree Girls. The film is a true story of a female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s

John Lee Hancock recently completed a draft of the script by Margaret Nagle.

Aniston will also produce.

I’m pretty sure that I’m not in the target demographic for this film.

Source: Variety

2. Hollywood is moving ahead on a new film version of long running western series Gunsmoke.

CBS Films has hired National Treasure: Book of Secrets writer Gregory Poirier to write the script for the film.

Gunsmoke holds the record for being the longest running scripted television drama.

There’s a shock - a film version of a classic TV show. I wonder what’s next for the remake machine.